Biography

Shaheen Dill-Riaz is a filmmaker, director, producer and writer based in Berlin.

Shaheen Dill-Riaz was born in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, in 1969. He spent most of his childhood in a small village on the coast of the Bay of Bengal until his parents sent him to a military academy. But drill and discipline could not extinguish his love for films. Upon graduation, he went on to become a film activist and deeply immersed himself in the so- called „Short Film Movement“ in Dhaka at the end of the 80s.

Having received a scholarship from the German Goethe-Institut, Shaheen Dill-Riaz moved to Berlin in the early 90s to study art history and theatrical science at the Freie Universität Berlin. He later enrolled at the University of Film & Television Konrad Wolf Potsdam-Babelsberg, where he graduated in cinematography with his feature-length film Sand and Water (2002).

Shaheen Dill-Riaz has been living in Berlin ever since, working as an independent filmmaker, director and writer in Europe and Asia. Almost all of his films have been released as feature-length documentaries in German movie theaters, and most were broadcast on German national television as well. Those include The Happiest People (2005), the critically acclaimed film Ironeaters (2008), which earned Dill-Riaz the renowned Grimme Award. More successful films followed, such as Korankinder (2009) and The Networker (2011). His films The Projectionist and Side by Side both premiered to great success in October 2012.

Shaheen Dill-Riaz’ latest film, Distant Fortune hit the screens on March 7, 2015, followed by an extended movie tour throughout Germany.

Shaheen Dill-Riaz is also a Fellow at the “Cultural Foundations of Integration” Center of Excellence at the University of Konstanz, Germany, where he has been working as a guest-lecturer for the M.A. program “Studies in European Culture” in 2010 and 2012.